Our research turned up this episode in Smith history that many of today’s students may not be aware of… Angry Smith College students demand to be accepted for their brainpower rather than their beauty. More than 200 women gathered on the campus last night to protest Playboy magazine’s invitation to students to pose for a special issue […]
Continue reading 1990: Smith Students Mobilize Against Playboy
Some of our opponents have claimed that life in the sex industry is liberating and empowering for women. That didn’t prove to be the case for Karen Harrison, who share her experience at a public hearing in Easthampton. The Union-News reports… About 200 opponents turned out in opposition to nude dancing last night at a […]
Continue reading Former Stripper Tells Easthampton Hearing about the Life: It Stinks
80% of prostitution survivors at the WHISPER Oral History Project reported that their customers showed them pornography to illustrate the kinds of sexual activities in which they wanted to engage. 52% of the women stated that pornography played a significant role in teaching them what was expected of them as prostitutes. 30% reported that their […]
Continue reading Pornography Trains and Indoctrinates Prostitutes
NPN’s Jendi Reiter reviews an essay by Sherry Lee Short, “Making hay while the sun shines: The dynamics of rural strip clubs in the American Upper Midwest, and the community response”. This essay is published in Christine Stark & Rebecca Whisnant, eds., Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, […]
An observation from The New York Times undercuts the oft-heard argument that if local people truly don’t want a porn shop, it will wither away: People do not, as a rule, buy pornography in their own neighborhoods. As a result, pornography and sex-aid stores tend to be near mass transit, ideally as near as possible, […]
Continue reading People Prefer to Buy Porn Outside Their Own Neighborhoods
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, 1/12/03… [I]n studios in the San Fernando Valley…actors and actresses were working on movies. They put in long hours, commonly without meal breaks. They often worked without clean toilets, toilet paper, soap or water. More importantly, they were exposed to a host of infectious, and sometimes fatal, diseases…[A]ctors […]
[Updated June 25, 2007] The profits from porn movies and phone sex flow through several “blue-chip” American corporations. These include Holiday Inn, Marriott, AOL Time Warner, Comcast, EchoStar Communications, DirecTV, Adelphia, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems and AT&T. If you own shares in these companies, you might consider discussing the matter with their shareholder […]
The New York Times writes about how porn workers are put at risk to satisfy consumer tastes in “Sex-Film Industry Threatened With Condom Requirement” (8/24/04)…While most people in the sex industry appear to agree in principle with the idea of consistent condom use, it has long been believed here that condoms are not sexy.“In any […]
Continue reading Condom Use Below 20% in American Porn Movies
NPN’s Jendi Reiter reviews an essay by D.A. Clarke, “Prostitution for everyone: Feminism, globalisation, and the sex industry”. This essay is published in Christine Stark & Rebecca Whisnant, eds., Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2004, pp. 149-205).This is the fourth in a series of reviews of the […]
Talk Back Northampton prominently quotes literature from the Feminists for Free Expression that asserts “that half the adult videos bought or rented in the US are done so by women or women in couples”. TBN seems to be suggesting that since lots of women buy porn, it’s OK that much of porn exploits and abuses women. We question both […]